Jack Miller Center Unveils ‘ContextUS,’ a New, Online Civics Library

ContextUS is the Jack Miller Center’s newly published, free online library that provides citizens with the content to gain that necessary civic knowledge. This state-of-the-art resource gives teachers, students, and scholars access to more than 700 core texts of the American political tradition, paired with the most up-to-date technology in library science, to transmit a civic education in self-government to the next generation of Americans.

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U.S. History and Civics National Test Scores Plunge to Lowest Levels on Record

U.S. Education Department data released on Wednesday finds national eighth-grade test scores in U.S. History and civics dropped to their lowest level on record last year.

Compared to 2018, average test scores on the 2022 Nation’s Report Card (National Assessment of Educational Progress – NAEP) declined in both subjects. Additionally, scores dropped for lower- and middle-performing students in civics, and across five selected percentiles, except the 90th percentile, in U.S. history.

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Commentary: A Republic if You Can Teach It

President Biden has a civics lesson that he is fond of and regularly repeats. It is about how the United States is unique in the world because of the founding ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

“Unlike every other nation on Earth, we were founded based on an idea,” he notes before adding that “while we’ve never fully lived up” to those principles, “we have never given up on them.”

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Commentary: Civics Education Is More Important Than Ever

At its founding, American K-12 public education was meant to prepare young people to be active participants in our democratic republic. That should still be its highest purpose, especially when it comes to teaching civics.

Historically, public schools held fast to the principle that effective education must be non-partisan. Knowing they had great power to influence young minds, teachers used to be careful to choose content and pedagogies that restricted their ability to impose their personal political views on schoolchildren.

Today, maintaining non-partisanship is more important than ever in classrooms. Sadly, it’s increasingly dishonored. Civics has become a hot-button issue of late, particularly after remote learning allowed more parents to see what their children were actually being taught. Many were not happy with what they saw, and the debate over civics education is symptomatic of the larger divide that has become such a looming threat to American society.

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Scholar Gives ‘A’ Grade to Proposed Florida K-12 Civics and Government Standards

A new report released Wednesday that provides reviews and grades of the nation’s leading civics programs has rated the proposed Florida K-12 Civics and Government Standards with a grade of “A.”

Dr. David Randall, author of “Learning for Self-Government: A K-12 Civics Report Card,” published at the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, told The Florida Capital Star during a phone interview the “social studies standards in the states really matter.”

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Commentary: America’s Civics and History Class Failures

Six former U.S. education secretaries, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, are sounding the alarm about the grave danger our constitutional democracy faces. Years of political polarization have culminated in riots in our cities spanning months, along with the storming of the U.S. Capitol. These events point to a root cause of our plight: our failure to provide sound civics and history teaching in America’s K-12 schools.

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Leahy and Benson: Seattle’s New Math Curriculum Tied to Ethnic Studies Citing Origin, Identity, and Agency

Live from music row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by former public education teacher and author of Can America’s Schools Be Saved, Edwin Benson to discuss Seattle’s current public school curriculum which somehow manages to correlate ethnic studies with mathematics. 

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Carol Swain Talks to Leahy About the Problems in Public Education and Societies Lack of History and Civic Knowledge

During a specific discussion Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am –Leahy spoke with in-studio guest and former Mayoral candidate Dr. Carol Swain about public education issues and Obama’s 2014 executive order called restorative justice through a document issued by his Department of Education (Guiding Principles: A Resource Guide for Improving School Climate and Discipline). This allowed for more often than naught black students to remain in the classroom despite high levels of discipline problems. The program also added those of disabilities to its initiative.

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New Tennessee Law Requires Civics Test for High School Students

  A new Tennessee law requires the state’s high school students not only take but pass a high school civics test. As Chalkbeat.org reported, Tennessee high school students previously only had to take the test to graduate. Now, they must also pass the exam. No one at the Tennessee Department of Education returned The Tennessee Star’s repeated requests for comment by voicemail and email Tuesday. Specifically, The Star asked to see an example of the test, information about who will take the test, and what are the consequences for performing poorly. According to Chalkbeat.org, however, the questions are varied and detailed. “From the Declaration of Independence to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 50 questions are drawn from the citizenship test administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,” the website reported. “Students must get at least 70 percent right to receive their diploma, and they can take the online test multiple times. The goal is to build a more informed citizenry.” The Johnson City Press quoted various state officials and educators about the test. According to the paper: • Tennessee State Rep. Micah Van Huss, R-Jonesborough, said the exam is “one way of teaching Tennessee kids the importance of our God-given liberties and…

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Commentary: America’s Gun Culture Cultivates Civic Virtue

by Aaron Tao   Many people are often surprised to learn that I am a gun owner and firm defender of the Second Amendment. After all, I, a first-generation Chinese-American immigrant, do not fit the stereotype of the typical American gun owner. Of all of America’s cherished freedoms, the natural and unalienable right of self-defense, recognized and protected (not granted) by the Second Amendment, took me the longest to fully embrace. But as an open-minded rationalist, the lessons of history and statistical research proved overwhelming (not to mention the sheer fun of learning the basic operations and mechanics of firearms) and eventually helped me understand why tens of millions of my fellow Americans treasure their right to keep and bear arms. Cultivating Civic Virtue From the colonists winning independence from Great Britain to African-Americans vindicating their civil rights, the role of the gun is inseparable from American identity. The gun is the ultimate multipurpose tool that empowers its user with the means to put food on the table, as well as preserve one’s life, whether against common street criminals or government tyranny. The philosophical underpinnings and lived experiences that shaped American gun culture all matter (and reinforce each other), but I want to focus on one aspect in particular: the cultivation of civic virtue. Owning and shooting a gun…

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Commentary: A Great Civic Awakening to America’s ‘Founding Virtues’

by Annie Holmquist   When it comes to the direction of society Americans (surprisingly) agree: things are not getting better. That’s the conclusion one quickly draws from a recent Pew Research report which asks what America will look like in 2050. As the chart below shows, Americans think the country will be less important on a global level, the gap between socio-economic classes will grow, and the country will be more divided politically. Dig deeper and the reason for such pessimism becomes clear: Americans recognize that major pillars of society are crumbling and will continue to do so in the next several decades. The following stats give a small glimpse of this realization: 37 percent of Americans believe work will decline due to the rise of robots 44 percent of Americans think standard of living will decline 46 percent of Americans think childbearing will diminish 50 percent of Americans think religion will become less important 53 percent of Americans think marriage will become less prevalent 72 percent of Americans are concerned about financial stability in retirement It’s depressing. As I read these pessimistic views, I had a sense I had heard them before. Then I remembered. In his 2012 book, Coming Apart, sociologist Charles Murray…

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Commentary: Parents, Smart Government Requires Teaching Children Civics

by Brad Johnson   In the fall of 2012, I excitedly began my senior year government class. I was about to sit through a course on our system of government while also watching it play out right before my eyes on its biggest stage during the 2012 election. Much to my chagrin, nobody else seemed even remotely as thrilled. Throughout the next five months, blank stares and snores engulfed the classroom with unmistakable indifference. In those moments, it hit me just how far we had fallen. Recently, I was struck by a similar feeling. I came across yet another condemnation of our system of representative government on Twitter. Waleed Shahid, a former advisor to New York Congressional Candidate and Democratic Socialist heartthrob Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said the Senate is not democratic enough because less populous states receive the same representation as high-population states. But this is the very point of the Senate. Without equal representation in one house of Congress, large states would be able to run roughshod over smaller states. Yet this fact is continually ignored by civically-illiterate citizens eager to support their points of frustration against Trump’s agenda. And Shahid wasn’t alone in his sentiment about the Electoral College. Hordes of…

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